Private information is big business and everyone is trying to watch you. The secret services, governments, Microsoft, cyber-criminals, and your creepy neighbor from across the street all want to know what you’re doing, all the time.

How It Works

Network traffic analysis is arguably the most powerful weapon in a data collector’s armory. It can track your behavior and interests for advertising companies, it can lead to price discrimination on online shopping sites based on location, it can even reveal your identity to people who might want to silence or harm you.

Basic encryption techniques don’t protect you against traffic analysis. Data sent over the internet has two key aspects: the payload and the header.

The payload is the actual data (for example, the contents of an email); the header helps the data get to its destination. It includes information such as source, size, and timestamps. Encryption can only hide the payload, not the header.

And that’s when Tor comes in. It sends your internet traffic through so many individual relays and tunnels that the header is nonsensical to traffic analysis tools. In simple terms, instead of going directly from A to B, the network sends your traffic on a maze-like route through many locations.

A sniffer looking at a single point on that route has no way to tell where the traffic originated or where it’s going.

Browser Features

To access the Tor network, you need to use the Tor Browser. It’s so secure that the US Navy uses it for intelligence gathering. Tor is also used by law enforcement organizations who want to visit websites without leaving government IP addresses in the site’s log.

You don’t need to install any software on your machine; the browser is a portable app that can live on a USB stick. It means you can use the service regardless of what computer you’re working on, even if it’s in a public location such as a library or university.

The design of the browser will be instantly recognizable to Firefox users, but there are a couple of notable changes. The biggest difference is the integration of NoScript; it’s included by default. Unlike the regular NoScript add-on—which can be complicated to use—the Tor version has an easy-to-use slider to manage your privacy.

There are also some downsides to using the Tor Browser. For most users, the biggest issue is speed. Because your traffic is taking such a twisty route to get to its destination, your browsing experience will not be as fast. If you have a good connection, it might not be an issue, but if your internet speed is slow, Tor might become painful to use.

Ultimately, while Tor is the most anonymous browser option, it doesn’t guarantee anonymity. Taking online risks—such as downloading torrents or illegally streaming live TV—will still leave you vulnerable. But when compared to the mainstream browsers like Chrome and Safari, there is no contest.

If you’re a Google Chrome user, SRWare Iron will be familiar; it’s based on the open-source Chromium project, so a lot of the on-screen visuals look very similar.

The main difference between Chrome and SRWare Iron is data protection. Experts have criticized Chrome for its reliance on a “Unique User ID”; every time you start a session, Google is alerted to your data usage.

Note that if you want to truly stay safe and enjoy anonymous browsing online, you should definitely pair your anonymous web browser with a reputable VPN that cares about your privacy. Don’t know which VPN to use? We highly recommend ExpressVPN. If you use this link, you can get three FREE months when you sign up for one year.

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Vinnie

January 10, 2019 at 6:22 pm

WTF good is a VPN when there's a payment trail right to your door? Even paying with gift cards is not secure because they're all running canvas fingerprints, or trying to, and you cannot get your card authorized until you allow it. I didn't allow it and my "anonymous" gift card was in the toilet.Get a freakin' grip, people. These companies will rat you out in a NY minute, and so won't the people who process "anonymous" payment. Until and unless they allow cash, forget it entirely.

Even Tor isn't big time safe because of all the monitoring of the exit nodes going on.Most of them are now run by the NSA.

Good read -- HOWEVER..... YOu left out a few key points here... Firstly...

TOR Browser is built ontop of Firefox, which firefox is now adays a freankenstiend of Netscape, Internet explorer, Opera as it used to be about 10 years ago. and Chrome... But all in all for manageability of your privacy settings, Firefox and its children such as TOR, are far more easily set up to respect your privacy vs that of the Bull in this china shop... Chrome.... Chrome is based on Chromium, an Open source and yes and no in terms of privacy etc. Chromium flat out gives you the manual and says here... You wanna be all tyrannical about your privacy concerns... do us a favor, join the mailing list, read the dos, assemble this baby from source yourself, and add in whatever bells n whistles you want... the Iron browser... does have some Pros over its Parent. but not its grand parent... By the time Iron gets its access to the code, being that since it is based off of Chrome, which is based off of chromium, it is still behind the curve. it hasn't even received (or might have only just implemented them, since chromium is OPEN SOURCE, the code is available to hack away at,) the hot fixes and security updates from chromium by the time chrome is dropping their next point update; chrome isnt open source and therefor the current release of code isnt available publically(but it is in its ways, as there are the canary and beta releases etc)

Chromodo i have a softspot for this browser asit was actually the one which got me to jump the fence from Firefox, aroujnd the time FF had some really shitty platform changes, such as the switch in how Extensions and apps were implemented. and all that jazz ... FF is regaining its luster with me, but also so is

OPERA!!!! opera happens to be the only one of them that is actyually offering a VPN with theirs,, so thats ahuge win for them. and Opera has in the past been a ver PRO PRIVACY browser thats also light on the resources, and was also the basic model of our current generations ...

.... browser comes with duckduckgo search page. On Every website its possible to enable java, first party cookies and 3th party cookies. By default nothing is enabled. It Can work together with tor. Available only on Android. No adds as far i Can see or other sneaky things. The name of THE browser? Search yourself. Otherwise its baught by government very fast I think

How can SRWare Iron be considered a private browser when they have embedded Bing search engine as the default that cannot be removed even when Bing, Google and other chosen search engines are removed from the settings. Bing remains when a new tab is opened and cannot be changed. Surely this should raise concerns about this browsers privacy claims. The issue is on their own forum and has by and large been ignored by Iron.

I second that. SRWare ignores most forum users complaining about having BING as the default search engine in newly open tabs, even if the default search engine in the address bar has been changed to something less privacy invading. SRWare has sold out its users to Microsoft via their continued insistence of using BING. There have been complaints about BING in SRWare Iron in their own forums for more than two years since 2016. Strange that anyone could recommend it for privacy, when the two-faced developers obviously couldn't give a monkey's about user privacy.

Even Epic has Bing as the search engine. If one tries to ascertain privacy issues with Bitdefender clean up facility,there is hardly any seen as against Firefox--even with DDG search engine integration.

I've been using Epic for several years now with absolutely no complaints other than it has limited add-ons which is no real issue for me. If you're concerned about search engines then simply delete the ones you don't want. I always delete them all except DDG and add Startpage. Those are the only two I use.

UK is very protected, the internet here is censured, YouTube, pirate-bay, everything it is monitored. i used tor before, but it is slow, do not allows downloads and is complicated, now i use epic browser, you press epic encrypted proxy button and set on canada or singapore and the censorship evaporates. is way better and faster than tor, you become invisible. the internet its how it should be FREE, for mostly 70% of my webbing i use epic. hope will not change. the best browser, by leaps and bounders. i don`t do nothing illegal, but i don`t like to be monitored, i like my privacy to be respected, with epic you do not need other privacy browser. it is from india, no complain. i have 3 years using epic, took me days of research to discover this information, government censure sucks a lot.

I have and use both TOR and EPIC. They both work unlike the other two mentioned browsers but EPIC constantly crashes during the day. Tor allows me to add a tab refresh extension but EPIC doesn't. TOR is more useful to me.

Comodo and SRWare both reveal my IP address when checking on doileak.com

I use Firefox but usually now go to Tor to mad things happen someone will delete results if you surf normally.
When I want to listen to music or watch movies online Tor a must, otherwise they will block search results (Sweden)
But if you want to use other browsers on Linux then you install Vin that enables instalation of any browser good luck good people:)https://www.winehq.org/download

BurnerBrowser.com total privacy, no logs. You are in complete control of your servers, they are not shared. When you are done using the internet, click Burn and there is no digital footprint. Everything is wiped clean!
Burner Browser is the most private browser.

How about Opera (normal, private window, VPN)? I realized that google and some other sites keep flagging Opera as an unsupported browser, while recommending Firefox, Chrome, IE, etc.
How secured is Opera's privacy?

great article, but I would like your opinion on Brave Browser. It uses a chromium, has phishing blocking, scrip blocking(good to bypass paywalls) and for last finger printing protection.
It works great(I am even using it right now), however I am not a tech savvy, so I have my doubts about Brave.
Care to share your toughts??

Your local ISP knows everything and they can see and record EVERYTHING you send over the internet, even what websites or web pages you visit or connect to... but if you have a secure connection (https: encrypted web page), they will have a very hard time trying to decrypt any information passing between you and the other secure website.

i cannot find any useful proxy or any VPN which will alow me to view https websites because my ISP doesn't allows me to open https websites and most of vpn use this secure protocol to connect to their services :(

I am a network administrator and UltraSurf flags antiviruses and other flags that end up causing bans from the carrier. We were having all sorts of temporary bans on our public IP because of UltraSurf. Once we disallowed the use of UltraSurf in our firewall, all stabilized.

Using Incognito mode has nothing to do with surfing the net anonymously...

All it does is prevent storing your browsing history on the local machine. It's still possible for companies inc. your ISP to see exactly what you're doing unless you take further measures as you do explain, although you do give the wrong impression saying Incognito mode is like a half step towards anonymity.

When I was writing that portion, what I was trying to say is that using Incognito mode can help protect our information FROM Google's scrutiny, but this would actually require a few more steps, like installing the Google Analytics Opt-Out Addon, and pausing Google Search Web History.

Dan is a British expat living in Mexico. He is currently a Senior Writer for MakeUseOf. At various times, he has been the Social Editor, Creative Editor, and Finance Editor. He is also an Editor for MUO's sister site, Blocks Decoded. Prior to his writing career, he was a Financial Consultant. You can follow him on Twitter and Facebook.